Yoka Neuman

Johanna Maria "Yoka" Neuman (née Dijkstra ; 21 June 1928 – 21 November 2021) was a New Zealand feminist and gay rights activist. Based in the Dunedin area, she was the founder of the Lesbian Mothers' Defence Fund and a founding member of the Dunedin Women's Refuge.

Early life and family Neuman was born Johanna Maria Dijkstra on the island of Singkep in the Dutch East Indies on 21 June 1928, the eldest of four children of Bertha and Abraham Jan Dijkstra. Her father, an engineer, worked at a tin mine on Singkep. The family's home was requisitioned by the German forces in 1943 and the family was moved to Hengelo, where they experienced the Dutch famine of 1944–1945. Meanwhile, in 1942 her father had been imprisoned in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp in Indonesia, and the family was reunited in Holland in 1945. Abraham Dijkstra ten years later. Hans Neuman worked as a psychiatric assistant at Seacliff Psychiatric Hospital, and died in 1973 after suffering a stroke.

As a mother with young children, Yoka Neuman became involved in community activities, including with her local playcentre and the Save Manapouri campaign.

In 1979, Neuman came out as lesbian, and the following year began a relationship with Jill Dunwoodie, a teacher at Tahuna Normal Intermediate School, and they remained together until Dunwoodie's death in 2008. as a reaction to the submission by Families Need Fathers to the Guardianship Amendment Bill that sought to prevent children from being brought up in homosexual households. Through this, the legal term "domestic partnership" became more widely accepted in New Zealand.

Neuman was part of the Dunedin Collective for Woman (from 1972), and helped establish Rape Crisis Dunedin and the Women's Resource Centre. She also supported the opening of New Zealand's first women's bookshop, Daybreak, in Dunedin, where she was a volunteer.

In 1990, Neuman received the New Zealand 1990 Commemoration Medal.

Death Neuman died at a rest home in Dunedin on 21 November 2021, at the age of 93.